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The Religion of 
Abraham Lincoln 



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George A. Tmam-r 

Minister of 1 he Fir^ Congregational L nitarian Church 
of Cincinnati 



FEBRUARY. 1909 



Cincinnati 
Thi Ebbcrt Sc Richardson Co. 



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45 



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'He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall 
see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. 
Surely he hath borne our sorrows; he was wounded 
for our transgressions, the chastisement of our peace 
was upon him. — Isaiah jj; j, 4, 5. 



THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



Whether or not Abraham Lincohi was a religious 
man, and what were the essential ideas of the world, 
as governed by spiritual laws, which guided him in 
his Presidential office, are problems often debated and 
upon which it is profitable at an im])ortant anniversary 
of his birth to seek li^ht. 

II(»w far was Lincoln's ability to meet effectively the 
burden^ <.f hi> public service derived from religious 
conviction, which has borne so large a part in forti- 
fying men in difficult activities? In what respect was 
he a religious man. and h<»w did his religion corres- 
pond to what passes under that name in our X'ation 
at large" 

Let Us look at the early circumstances of his educa- 
tion ; of his moral and intellectual evolution. 

If I repeat a few conunonplaces of this story, the 
justification will lie in the fact that the familiar in 
history is stranger to the average man than those of 
us who deal much in books are apt to recognize; so 
that many an old story is a new tale to some listeners. 

I)orn in Kentucky in L^09, moving with his parents 
when he was seven into Indiana, then at twenty-one, 
in ls;{(), continuing the migration into Illinois, he 
spent those early years, and indeed his entire early life, 
until he was chosen President, in a rather rude, uncul- 
tivated comnuuiity, where education was rare — so far 
as it depended upon books and book knowledge — and 



4 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

where religious institutions were quite as primitive and 
illiterate as the rest of the intellectual influences. 

Preaching-, as those frontier settlements knew it, was 
largely an emphasis upon the need of escaping the 
wrath to come after death, supported upon a concep- 
tion of God and human nature which set the Christian 
religion apart from every other body of opinion about 
which the wit of man was disposed to exercise itself. 
That is, theology, the doctrines of what God is, how 
He feels towards His human creatures, how He makes 
known His will to them, what He expects of them, 
was not a system of ideas which one should reason 
about, as every citizen of the country could reason out 
why he should vote for the Whig or the Democratic 
party, or why he should cultivate his crops in one way 
rather than in another way, but it was something to be 
taken because a mysterious, . infallible revelation laid 
it down as everlasting truth. And yet oddly enough, 
with this one unerring revelation at the hand of every 
man who could read the Bible, there were innumerable 
shades of doctrine as to the contents of the Bible, their 
meaning, the proper emphasis to be laid upon one 
feature over another, forming an ever-increasing com- 
pany of sects and fanaticisms — Baptists, Freewill or 
Predestinarian Baptists, Covenanters, Wesleyans, Bi- 
ble Christians, Presbyterians and what-not besides. 

Inevitably the expounders of these different shades 
of theory about the one infallible revelation were 
largely unlettered men, often narrow and intolerant of 
sympathy, sometimes having considerable native elo- 
quence and capable of moving congregations to tem- 
pests of emotion, of hope and fear, but oftener 



\k^ 3 1911 



T}]E RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LIXXOLX. 

dry, dull and stupid in their exhortations; and under 
such expounders of the Bible, Lincoln's acquaintance 
with the vast unseen universe into which we all like to 
peer, in wonder and awe, was first developed. His 
introduction to secular learning, to arithmetic, geogra- 
phy, history, fiction, was through very scanty facilities; 
a few weeks' schooling in a year, books of any sort, 
poor or good, far between, the necessity of contributing^ 
to the family living or to his own support, demanding 
long hr)urs. with little time left to study ; such were 
the conditions under which he gained his mental dis- 
cipline, and it shows Ivnv strong were his native 
powers, derived, no one can guess from what inheri- 
tance, or what mystery of the evolution of the brain, 
that he rose so high above the average man of his 
environment, and came to think so widely and wisely 
ujxtn all sorts of j)roblems of human duty. 

.Shf.wing thus a striking originality in insisting 
upon l)iing a student when everybody about him was 
entirely satisfied to live as mere day-by-day plodders 
uj)on the earth which begat them, and would soon re- 
ceive them into its bosom, he early showed a spirit of 
independence in viewing religious (|uestions, and for 
a time earned and undoubtedly long retained theoj)pro- 
brium of being an inl'idel (»r >kej)tic and denier, which 
probably in any proper sense he never was. 

These epithets in illiterate communities have always 
been apj)lied to minds which departed from the me- 
chanical lines of thinking about faith anrl duty. He 
who reasons for himself, who asks troublesome ques- 
tif)ns of the established systems of faith, used to be 
rudely disposed of. either by being turned over to the 



6 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

officers of the state to be dealt with as a criminal, or by 
being branded by local public opinion as a social out- 
cast, an enemy of the things which lie at the root of 
the public peace and safety. But those of us who are 
measurably acquainted with the history of opinion, 
know that the minds which seek the grounds of fact 
and probability, which support every great system of 
doctrine, social, political, scientific, or religious, are 
often the most honest and disinterested spirits of their 
age, guides and leaders of our race out of its degrada- 
tions, its servitudes, its superstitions, its wickedness, 
into freedom and a higher righteousness, as they are 
often the most trusted and beloved persons among the 
neighbors who best know them; the men and women 
distinguished for doing good. 

I think the world has occasion to rejoice that a mind 
like Lincoln's, in those early years of eager grasping 
after every form of light upon the mystery of exist- 
ence, chanced to find some of the books, branded in 
conventional, church communities with odium, which 
have been the great emancipators of intelligence and 
conscience — books written by the Frenchmen, Vol- 
taire and Volney, and by the patriot of our American 
Revolution, Thomas Paine, books which contain much 
that is crude and useless or even offensive to reason 
today with our larger view of the universe, but which 
in their day and generation did an inestimable work 
in teaching men to think courageously, to speak hon- 
estly, and especially to be tolerant and sympathetic to- 
wards differences of judgment. 

Lincoln's professional line of study, as he became 
mature, was in the limited direction of law; he had 



THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LIN'COLX. 7 

little opportunity to become a specialist in theology or 
philosophy, but to the end of his career he retained 
that early-manifested disposition to seek the reason- 
ableness, the humanity and morality of a doctrine in 
state or church, which resulted in his being to the end 
what you and I are accustomed to call a liberal or 
rationalist in matters of devout faith. 

All his legion of biographers, gleaning the ground 
wherever there is any suggestion of a trace of Lincoln's 
sayings or transactions, agree that the utmost conces- 
sion he ever made to acceptance of the popular creeds 
of Christendom was to express his assurance that a 
great wi>dnm and justice overruled and directed the 
affairs of men, a wisdom up<jn which, in his moods of 
depression, which were many, he threw himself, not 
so much in the formal utterance of praying, although 
this, he stated, was a n«)t infrequent resort, as in the 
inner sense of confidence that if he did his duty the 
Almigh'N vv..nl,l ti..i Kt things of the Xation l'o far 
amisv. 

I At that fine, lofty utterance of his in what is known 
in history as the second inaugural address delivered 
to Congress on the 1th of March, lsG5, illustrate this 
idea. In prcliiniiiary. it should be remembere<l that 
the war f(»r the maintenance of the Union had gone on 
with enormous loss of life and expenditure of trea- 
surt-. and with a vast deal of demoralization of the 
public morality, as wars always produce, for four 
years, and it was not easy to discern any rift in the 
dark cloud which hung over the Xation, as to whether 
thi> was to Ik.' a single and imited country, or a sort 



8 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

of South American community, split into petty and 
mutually warring nationalities. 

This is a passage in which he seeks to interpret the 
meaning of this protracted anxiety : 

*'The Almighty has His own purposes. Woe unto 
the world because of offenses. It must needs be that 
offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the 
offense cometh. If we shall suppose that American 
slavery is one of these offenses which in the provi- 
dence of God must needs come, but which having con- 
tinued through His appointed time He now wills to 
remove * * --k >s= shall we discern there any de- 
parture from those divine attributes which the believers 
in a living God ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope, 
fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war 
may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it con- 
tinue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two 
hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall 
be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 
three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, that 
the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous al- 
together. With malice towards none, with charity for 
all, let us finish the work we are in, to bind up the 
Nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne 
the battle, and for his widow and orphans, to do all 
that may achieve and cherish a lasting place among 
ourselves and with all nations." 

In the old classification of the state of minds of men 
with regard to religion, people were divided into 
church members and those who belonged to no church. 



THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LIXCULX. 9 

In the new classification, especially among liberals, 
the distinction is drawn between those who have no 
ideas or convictions about the unseen universe or 
moral responsibilities, and those who do think and feel 
upon such subjects whether or not they manifest their 
ideas by some form of public worship or union with a 
church organization. From this point of view the 
relij^nous man may and very often does refuse to call 
himself by one (jr another sectarian name. 

Under that old classification, Lincoln was shut out 
from the fold of the faithful. lie once expressed his 
feeling upon the subject, as reported by a painter who 
was busy for many weeks at the White House in mak- 
ing the President's portrait — Mr. Carpenter. 

"I have never joined any church, but whenever I can 
fin<l any one whose whole creed is summed up in love 
to (jt)d and love to man, that church will I join with 
all my heart and send." 

In conformity to the custom of Washington, and of 
his home at .^j)ringfield before he became President, he 
wa^ a regidar attendant upon Sunday of a Presbyter- 
ian church with his family, but he frankly asserted 
that with many of the articles of the creed of the 
church, to which by some social accident he became 
attached, he had no sympathy, and in his private con- 
versation he freely, although without severity, criti- 
cised the ideas of infallible revelation supported by 
miracle, of the vicarious atonement of Jesus, of eternal 
torment of unbelievc^rsand similar standard doctrinesof 
Christianity. lie read the Bible with great interest and 
frequency, but \h\> was in much the spirit with which 
manv of us who were bred in small villages of limited 



10 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

library opportunities read the Hebrew Scriptures, be- 
cause the volume was always accessible, was in many 
parts interesting as story and poetry, and became, the 
better we knew it, an attractive storehouse of the say- 
ings which are quoted abundantly in the literature of 
the English-speaking nations. It w^as located among 
the wisdom volumes of humanity, to be acquainted with 
which w^as a part of culture. Lincoln prized the Bible 
as literature, not as a body of dogma before which the 
mind must stand stupified ; it was to be tasted and 
digested by reason and imagination. And his writings 
and speeches showed how saturated he had become 
with this noble body of the great thoughts of Israel. 

But such considerations of what he rejected of or- 
thodox doctrine and the conventional notions of God 
and man are only on the surface of his religion. 

He was by nature, or it may be some defect of his 
physical constitution, a mystic, one who felt that the 
invisible world had secrets which were communicated 
now and then to especially-prepared minds through 
dreams and visions, and there are several stories of his 
being deeply stirred by premonitions of danger and of 
public crisis which were borne in upon him through 
some unaccountable influence w^hich he could not rea- 
son about. 

One dream, not in itself of any more definiteness 
than are most of our dreams, in which he felt himself 
floating into boundless space, recurred to him several 
times and seemed to be premonitory of some 'great bat- 
tle or of some disaster to himself, as it was repeated, 
just before his assassination. That attachment of val- 
ue to dreams, which rarely if ever have any signifi- 



THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINXOLX. 11 

cance, was a part of his heritag^e from the old credu- 
lous atmosphere of Indiana and IHinuis, when he spent 
his evenings in the village grocery listening to the 
small talk of the idlers. 

In othef ages men thus moved by a sense of some- 
thing wierd around them in the unseen forces, have 
become founders of religious brotherhoods or leaders 
of new religions. Controlled by his strong practical 
sense, Lincoln did not allow these occasional moods to 
lure him into any eccentric actions or state of mind. 
But he had a good deal of melancholy from which he 
was lifted mainly by his great fund of humor; his de- 
light in hearing and constructing stories of entertain- 
ment .ind rediculous occurrences. His jokes became a 
by-word of his times, sometimes expressed at moments 
w hen his hearers were not in any facetious mood. But 
a> he once told an accjuaintance who expressed some 
ini|)atience at what seemed a too light story in a grave 
National emergency, "If I did not have this vent of 
illustration I should die !" 

And as a rule with all men who are called to trying 
positions, it is the ability to see the ludicrous aspect of 
things which is their salvation from desperation. I 
have always been deeply impressed with the display of 
that lighter spirit in the case of a famous English 
scholar and statesman, Sir Thomas More, who was de- 
capitated on Tower Hill in London in L").')5 by King 
Henry \ TIL As he was climbing the somewhat di- 
lapidated stairway to the axe, he stumbled and was 
helped to rise by the executioner. "See me safe up; 
as for my coming down I will shift for myself.'' In 



12 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN- 

one aspect it was a dreadful moment for any playful- 
ness, but to More himself it was a chance to show his 
self-mastery above all foolish fear. 

Lincoln's jokes carried abroad the idea that he was 
a shallow, buffoonish man. As he has described it, his 
stories could be whole arguments in themselves, which 
need no farther explanation ; a touch of wit or humor 
illuminates like a flash of lightning across a path at 
midnight. 

At root, his was the disposition of a moral prophet. 
All the stories which have been gleaned from his young 
manhood coincide in describing him as one who stood 
ever for principle against policy and expediency. His 
foremost question as a citizen, a lawyer or a politician 
was, ''What is right?" And especially in the choice of 
sides in the important political discussions which were 
stirring the Nation, over the part which negro slavery 
in the Southern States should be permitted to hold in 
directing National action, Lincoln promptly and reso- 
lutely put himself upon the side which maintained that 
the natural order of things is human liberty, not the 
servitude of any man of any complexion to any other 
man. 

When in his early career as a boatman on the Mis- 
sissippi he saw in New Orleans a negro auction block 
with men and women set up for sale to the highest 
bidder, he exclaimed excitedly, ''If I ever get a chance 
I will hit that thing hard !" Undoubtedly he recalled 
that old throb of indignant wrath when in the autumn 
of 1862, under his authority as President and Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the National Armies, he pro- 
claimed that after the coming first of January all slaves 



THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINXOLX. 13 

held upon the soil of the United States should be 
their own masters and mistresses. 

In the course of a notable political debate in Illinois 
when he was before the people as a candidate for 
United States Senator against one of the most power- 
ful of politicians, Stephen Douglas, he scandalized 
most of his party associates who were of the mood of 
trimming to what was supposed to be the popular in- 
difference to the rights of the negro, by frankly declar- 
ing in one of his most important speeches that "Sla- 
very is founded in the selfishness of man's nature; 
opposition to it in his love of justice. Xear eighty 
years ago we began by declaring that all men were cre- 
ated ecjual. In our greedy chase to make profit of 
the negro let us beware how we cancel and tear to 
pieces even the white man's charter of freedom." 

And again he said. "A government cannot perma- 
nently endure half slave, half free. A house divided 
against itself cannot stand. I do not expect the Union 
to be dissolved, but I do expect it will cease to be di- 
vided. It will become all one thing or all the other." 

It was his moral courage displayed at the outset of 
his ])ublic life in taking this unpopular side, which 
eventually carried him to the Presidential office, and 
which in the four years of his service at that post of 
honor in the most critical epoch of our X^ational life, 
made everybody who came in contact with him, whether 
lluy came to find fault or to approve, feel assured 
that at the Nation's head was an upright, disinterested 
l^atriot ; modest, simple, but sturdy of conviction, not 
t(^ be swerved from any course which he felt to be 
right. ( )ne of the most trying features of his office 



14 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

was the duty of passing judgment upon the sentence 
of soldiers convicted of desertion and doomed to be 
shot. Every Northern friend of such condemned de- 
serters who could get to Washington carried an appeal 
from the sentence of Mr. Lincoln, with the pretty toler- 
able assurance that if he would once hear the statement 
he would pardon the offender. The commanders of 
the Army were often deeply angry at this Presidential 
interference with discipline, upon the principle that the 
man who abandons his post of duty before an enemy 
exposes his companions in arms to disaster ; he is more 
than a coward, he is a betrayer of friends and allies. 

Nevertheless in a good many cases Lincoln's soft 
heart carried his sympathies with the convicted soldier, 
although, fortunately for the Army, only here and 
there one of the host of cowards could reach the Presi- 
dent with influence. But Lincoln possessed so much 
of the milk of human kindness that he would prefer 
to run the risk of doing some wrong, and especially of 
suffering some personal hurt, than to pass by an oppor- 
tunity to forgive an offender and give him another 
chance to do right. As one of his boyhood compan- 
ions testified, he was helpful to the women folk and 
the children and would n't let a bird's nest fall to the 
ground without tenderly picking up the nestlings. 

It is surprising that in that early frontier life where 
the minor vices of drinking and gambling are the 
habitual outlet of animal appetites, Lincoln shared none 
of them. He was to the end, abstemious, temperate, 
self-restrained. xAnd still he was upon cordial terms 
with all classes; that he did not care to take a drink 
did not separate him from the fellowship of his 
neighbors. 



THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LLXCOLX. 15 

Such simple cjualities of courage, kindness, unflinch- 
ing^ intcL^rity, the instinct of always putting himself 
upon the side of the weaker party, are the minor phases 
of the higher life of the soul of a man: and especially 
is this shown in his determination throughout his 
career of pijlitics never to yield a moral principle to a 
demand of expediency, and his feeling that the man 
who does the right, as intelligence shows him the 
right, is on God's side. 

These are more important proofs of Lincoln's reli- 
gion than his discussions of the stock doctrines of 
Christian theolog)'. 

As I have said, tliere is perfect accord among his 
veracious biograi)hers that in no essential point, out- 
side of his trust in Providence and his assurance that 
the world is governed by righteousness, was he in har- 
mony with the po{)ular churches of Christendom, nor 
would he, under any old regime, have been admitted 
as a ])lain common man to membership in any of them. 

And yet. if he had taken any pains to investigate 
when he was saying U) Mr. Cari)enter that he should 
like to find a church whose creed was simply that of 
love to Ciod and to man, he could have found it near 
by in the Unitarian church, which in those days, if I 
remember correctly, was ministered to by one of my 
predecessors in this pulj)it, Wm. Henry Channing, 
whose creed was the simplest compound of righteous- 
ness, freedom and trust in truth wheresoever it leads. 

At the same time when, in all the gleanings of remi- 
niscences of all sorts of visitors to the White House, 
there appear reports of what Mr. Lincoln said about 
prayer, about his liible readings, about his admiration 



16 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

for church people and Christianity, which seem to 
show that he moved towards the last of his life to- 
wards the creeds of orthodoxy, we must recognize 
that in the amenities of conversation with good, well- 
meaning, public-spirited men and women, he would as- 
sent to phrases which were rather an echo of what he 
was accustomed to hear from the minister of his 
Washington and Springfield churches, and not the 
expression of his own careful conviction. 

His oldest intimate friend in Illinois, Jesse Fell, to 
whom Lincoln talked confidentially about his inmost 
beliefs, reports, "If I was called upon to designate an 
author whose views most clearly represented Mr. Lin- 
coln, I should say that author was Theodore Parker." 

Now, Theodore Parker, as some of you know, was a 
Boston Unitarian minister of advanced rationalistic 
ideas, mated with profound reverence and gentleness; 
a teacher who did not hold that religion of any type 
came to man by miraculous revelation, and who was 
one of the earliest scholars to introduce into our coun- 
try the advanced criticism of the Scriptures as the pro- 
duct of human intelligence. It has been surmised with 
much plausibility that Lincoln's often-quoted phrase, 
''Government of the people, by the people, for the peo- 
ple," was derived from his reading of Theodore Par- 
ker's discourses, where it occurs in one of those strong 
discussions of political questions for which Parker's 
pulpit in Music Hall, Boston, was as noted as for his 
presentations of the religiousness of human nature. 

Dr. Wm. Ellery Channing, the Boston pioneer leader 
of our Unitarian Church in the beginning of the last 
century was also, according to Mr. Fell's testimony. 



THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINXOLX. 17 

one of Lincoln's well-known authors; Dr. Channing, 
among his still more important contributions to the 
moral uplifting of the world, being one of the earliest 
valiant advocates of negro emancipation, while yet 
such discussions were generally tabooed by conserva- 
tive citizens. 

The consideration of these potent influences upon 
Lincoln's mind in his search for religious belief is 
grateful lo those of us who hold that the most impor- 
tant service to the theolog)- of our country has been 
performed by a few of these emancii)at<jrs of the faith 
of reason, the men to whom this congregation looks 
as its founders. 

It is interesting to note Imw in all generations the 
indej)endcnt minds which aj)i)roach problems of relig- 
ion with the same fearlessness witii wiiicli they touch 
all other intellectual and moral (juotions^ substantially 
agree, that religion is less a matter of definite opinion 
upon OIK- or another subject of history or philosophy, 
than of the attitude of the soul with regard to justice, 
righteousness and human sympathy. A considerable 
number of llic men and women who in the course of 
time have been branded with oblocjuy as infidels, 
skej)tics. atheists, have made their indelible mark 
u\um civilizati<»n for their advocacy of great moral 
rights and princii)les like fair play, betwixt all classes, 
free<lom for all persons, universal justice. 

< >f lliem it might be written, as Leigh Hunt makes 
.\bou l-.en Adhem desire for his own final record, 
"Write me as one who loves his fellow men." 

The company of those who have loved greatly and 
endured much in behalf of their {principles in order 



18 THE RELIGION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

that humanity might be helped, is a distinguished fel- 
lowship of prophets, saints, martyrs, sages, unfaith- 
ful often to the forms of belief; but loyal to the 
core to the essence of truth and righteousness. And 
in this company Abraham Lincoln has a place. 



DtG ^Y ^i^iU 



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Ch S '12 



